Review: "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Freddie Mercury was a beautiful, beautiful man. He had the voice of an angry angel and the strut of a smirking devil. The songs he created with his band, Queen, have already entered the hall of ages. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is an exuberant celebration of the man and the music.

But not just Mercury himself.

One of the things I appreciated about the film, directed by Bryan Singer from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten, is that’s not a simple biopic of the lead singer. The other three members of the band -- lead guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) and bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) -- are fully represented as living, breathing people and not just “the other guys.” They regard Mercury as a brother and equal, and aren’t shy about calling out his self-centered behavior.

Rami Malek embodies the soul of Mercury, capturing his ineluctable showmanship onstage and retiring nature off it. For the songs, the filmmakers combined Malek’s vocals with those of Mercury and Marc Martel, a professional sound-alike. It’s an effective innovation, sounding like Mercury’s own voice while authentic enough to not seem like just canned playback.

The story follows Mercury for about 15 years, from a kid of Persian ethnicity who moved from Tanzania to the U.K. as a teenager, to the height of his fame and ego. It’s a mesmerizing, bravura performance by Malek, one that I hope is remembered during the awards season.

We witness Queen evolve from a college pub band into something more, selling their touring van to pay for studio time to cut an album. Born to conservative parents and with a protruding overbite caused by extra teeth, Mercury hungers to break out of his assigned role.

He wanted to play for the weirdos in the back of the room, because he was one.

Fame and fortune soon followed, but Mercury was kept grounded for many years by the companionship of Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), his onetime fiancé and for whom he wrote “Love of My Life.” Eventually he came out to her as bisexual, which ended their romance but not their friendship.

Queen deliberately blurred gender lines in their act, slapping each other’s bums and dressing in drag for a music video. At a time when being openly gay could literally be fatal, they toyed with our proscribed notions of attraction and thereby made breaking them seem less dangerous.

The movie contains many of the hallmarks of the rock movie -- shady producers, spats between the band, a sycophantic personal manager (a slimy Allen Leech) who worms his way into the star’s life and sows the seeds of dissension.

But the film never feels rote or predictable. We celebrate the live recreation of Queen performances -- if you don’t inadvertently start stamping your feet during “We Will Rock You,” you can’t be helped -- and marvel at the collaborative creativity that went into making them.

We don’t just feel like we’re observing Queen, but have been invited inside the bubble.

(Note: Singer was fired with two weeks left in production and replaced by Dexter Fletcher; however, the Director’s Guild awarded him sole credit.)

There are two mirrored shots near the beginning and end that encapsulate the film. They chronicle the moment when Queen was about to take the stage for the massive Live Aid concert in 1985, which was their big reunion after a split of several years. Both follow Mercury as he strides from his trailer through the backstage area and then prepares to leap out of the curtains to a live crowd in the hundreds of thousands, and a television audience of over a billion.

In the first, the camera follows Mercury alone from behind. We appreciate his singular flamboyant personality and eagerness to bask in the wave of adulation. In the second, the rest of the band follows him as together they take the stage as a group. In the first, he is Freddie, a virtuoso; in the second he is part of Queen, a legend.

That’s the lesson of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Even those blessed with superstar talent need others to reach their ultimate potential. Freddie Mercury found his onstage by joining his abilities with others, and offstage by looking to people who cared about him as a person rather than just as a rock god. I can’t wait to watch this movie again, and again.

Review: "Rebel in the Rye"

"I sometimes wish I’d never written it. It’s made me a prisoner. I’m shackled by my own creation." --Jerry Salinger

This will be just a very quick and shorter review. The film's release was moved up suddenly, and the studio was only able to supply me with a screener at the last minute. I always prefer to give full-length, well-thought analyses of new films, but the limits of the distribution/marketing system -- not to mention my own numerous obligations -- sometimes prevent that.

But journalists, as opposed to authors, understand that sometimes it is better to publish something quickly dashed off than nothing at all.

"Rebel in the Rye" is a biopic of "The Catcher in the Rye" author J.D. Salinger from about ages 20 to early 40s, after which he never published another word and became a virtual recluse.

As played (very well) by Nicholas Hoult, Salinger -- "Jerry" to his friends, "Sonny" to his family -- was an angry young man who understood better than others that his sort of anger is just not sustainable over the course of a lifetime. "Catcher" was published when he was barely into his 30s, very young to be dubbed "the next great American novelist," but already struggling to grasp the angst that drove him as a teen.

The film, written and directed by TV veteran Danny Strong, based on a biography by Kenneth Slawenski, has essentially two halves. The first is about Salinger's relationship with Whit Burnett, the legendary Columbia writing professor and editor of Story magazine, who discovered and shaped many of the 20th century's greatest literary voices. They start as antagonists, gradually evolve into mentor/student, followed by friendship and estrangement.

It's another knockout performance by Kevin Spacey, who has the rare ability to utterly disappear into a character. A frumpled, boozy, distracted man, his Whit recognizes raw talent when he sees it, but also knows that great writers have to be willing to sacrifice everything for their craft. When you're willing to spend your whole life typing and never be published, he tells Jerry, then you'll know you're meant to be a writer.

The second, less effective portion of the film is about Salinger's wartime experiences that left him fractured and unable to write. This is a low-budget film, so there are no depictions of battles or such, just dreamy vignettes of huddling in foxholes, liberating concentration camps, being analyzed and dismissed by Army psychiatrists.

The film tries to shoehorn an untidy life into its 110-minute running time, so Salinger's brief marriage to a German woman gets very short shrift, as does his second marriage to Claire Douglas (Lucy Boynton). They go from meet-cute to courting to raising family to resentment so fast, you'll miss the whole thing if you need a bathroom break.

I did appreciate how the film showcases portions of the writer's life that are less well-known, such as his devotion to Eastern meditation and yoga to help get over his war trauma.

Also popping up are Sarah Paulson as Dorothy Olding, Jerry's agent, who carefully navigates the pitfalls of the publishing game while genuinely caring about him as a person; Victor Garber and Hope Davis as his parents, who reacted to their son's gifts in very different ways; Zoey Deutch as Oona O'Neill, the unattainable girl Jerry woos and loses; and Brian d'Arcy James as the publisher who embraced "Catcher" when everyone else regarded it with befuddlement.

What the movie does best is show the development of Salinger from puckish kid to serious artist, and all the fits and stops along the way. He arrogantly insists that no changes be made to any of his short stories, resulting in a big break with the New Yorker getting pulled shortly before the war breaks out. Later, he finally agrees to meet with their editors and realizes they can actually improve his writing.

Salinger ultimately spent a decade developing the characters, the voice and the perspective that became "Catcher in the Rye." It's a reminder that great art never just springs forth like a thunderbolt from the gods, as most tellings would rather have it.

Usually, cinematic portraits of artists are better at revealing the person rather than their art, but with "Rebel in the Rye" the opposite is true. Salinger elevated his identity as a writer to such an extent that he ceased wishing to be the person he had been before. He shut out everything he felt was a distraction to his writing, which turned out to be... almost everything.

Video review: "Sing Street"

"Sing Street" is the most unabashedly romantic movie of the year. It's less about the music young people make than why they make it. Writer/director John Carney ("Once") creates movies about despair, and using art and love to find a way out of the dark holes into which we sink.

On the surface “Sing Street” would seem like a conscious effort to make this generation’s version of “The Commitments,” Alan Parker’s seminal 1991 tale of a fictional Irish band that (almost) makes it big singing the blues. But the new film is less about the allure of fame than the inner lives of those who feel compelled to start a band, get up in front of people and risk making a total fool of yourself.

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo plays Cosmo, an upright lad of 15 who’s just had to transfer to the rough-and-tumble Catholic public school because his parents are breaking up and can’t afford his posh private school anymore. Bullied by the working-class tough (Ian Kenny) and lorded over by the priests -- he’s forced to go about in his socks because he can’t afford the requisite black shoes -- Cosmo struggles to fit in, and struggles hard.

Then he sees Her.

Raphina (Lucy Boynton) is a year older, already out of school and might as well as live on another planet. She stands on the stoop of the orphan girls’ home across the street, smoking a cigarette and projecting disdain. She’s rumored to have an older boyfriend who’s a drug dealer, and says she’s soon to depart Dublin for London to start her modeling career.

In a fit of uncharacteristic confidence, Cosmo walk up to her and convinces Raphina to be in the video his new band is shooting. What band? asks his equally dweeby friend, Darren (Ben Carolan). The one I have to start now, he responds.

Cue the familiar process of putting together the band, practicing, dealing with doubting parents, the nervousness of the first gig, and so on. One of Carney’s best moves is avoiding the mistake of trying to flesh out the other members of the band, instead relegating them to their deserved roles in the background.

Only Eamon (Mark McKenna) is given anything like co-equal status, since Cosmo doesn’t really have anything beyond a basic musical background, while the bespectacled loner can pick up just about any instrument and play it. Like a teenaged McCartney and Lennon, they’re soon cranking out pop hits.

(Gary Clark wrote most of the tunes, while Adam Levine co-wrote and sings one for the end sequence.)

Jack Reynor shines as Cosmo’s brother Brendan, who dropped out of college and hasn’t really left his room ever since, smoking doobies and hurling resentment at their parents. He ends up as his younger brother’s mentor, giving him records to listen to and imparting wisdom, both musical and otherwise.

So what is “Sing Street” really about?

It's about being a teenager and loving a girl clearly out of your league and Ireland in the '80s and brothers who brim with disappointment at themselves and hope for others and warring parents and bullies and abusive priests and gender morphing and rock 'n' roll.

Really, it's about everything.

Bonus features are a wee bit on the slim side. There are audition tapes for nine principle cast members, a making-of documentary and a Q&A with Carney and Levine.

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